The Poetry of Petrarch

by David Young

  as if he were with you, you unhappy wretch,

  so full of vain and foolish sentiments!

  For when you went away and left behind you

  the one you want, your heart remained with her;

  he hid, and hides him still, within her eyes.

  243

  Oh, fresh and shady, flowering green hill,

  where sometimes thoughtful, sometimes singing,

  she sits and gives us evidence of Heaven,

  she who has robbed the world of all its fame:

  my heart, who wished to leave me for her once

  (and that was wise, and he should stay with her),

  goes counting places now where grass is signed

  by her fair foot, and watered from my eyes.

  He draws in close to her and says, each step:

  “Ah, could that wretch be here for just a while,

  since he’s exhausted by his tears and life!”

  She smiles at that. But this game isn’t fair:

  without my heart, I’m stone; you’re paradise,

  oh, holy, sweet, and lucky place of hers!

  244

  My ills oppress me; I’m terrified by worse,

  toward which the way is broad and smooth, I fear,

  and just like you I’ve wandered into madness

  and rave together with you of hard thoughts;

  so heavy is this loss, this cruel shame,

  should I ask God for war or beg for peace?

  But why this brooding? Aren’t our destinies

  already fixed, ordained at that high throne?

  I don’t deserve the honor you accord me,

  I think you’re hoodwinked by Lord Love, who often

  makes us see crooked, though we’ve healthy eyes.

  Still, I can counsel you to lift your soul

  and aim toward Heaven while you spur your heart,

  because the road is long, the time is short.

  245

  Two roses, freshly picked in Paradise

  the other day, born on the first of May—

  a fine gift from a lover, old and wise,

  distributed between two younger ones,

  along with words and such a smile as

  might tame a wild man and teach him love,

  so that a brilliant and a loving ray

  transformed the visages of both his friends.

  “The sun’s not seen an equal pair of lovers,”

  he offered, as he gave a smile and sighed;

  then he gave hugs to them and turned away.

  He portioned out the roses and the words;

  my weary heart is glad and fearful still:

  oh, happy eloquence, oh, joyful day!

  246

  The breeze that softly sighs and moves among

  the laurel’s leaves and through her golden hair

  so transports souls with new and charming sights

  that they depart their bodies and go wandering.

  A white rose born among the cruel thorns;

  who could discover here on earth her equal?

  The glory of our time! Oh, living Jove,

  make sure I die ahead of her, I pray!

  That way I will not have to see the loss

  and great communal blight: world without sun,

  my own eyes blind, that have no other light,

  my soul bereft, that thinks of nothing else,

  my ears gone deaf, with nothing left to hear

  when her sweet words have vanished from our midst.

  247

  Some will assume that in my praise of her,

  she whom I love on earth, my style must err

  in making her the noblest one of all,

  holy and wise, beautiful, chaste, and charming.

  I think the opposite; what’s more, I fear

  she’ll take offense at all my humble words,

  since she deserves much higher, finer ones:

  who doesn’t credit this, let him come see her,

  and then he’ll say: “What this man hopes to do

  would wear out Athens, Arpinum, Mantua,

  and Smyrna, one lyre and the other.

  “A mortal tongue can’t reach her state, it’s too

  divine to touch upon. Love draws and drives

  this tongue: it is not choice, it’s destiny.”

  248

  Whoever wants to see what Heaven and Nature

  can bring about among us, let him come

  and gaze at her, sole sun, not just for me

  but for this blind world that’s forgotten virtue;

  let him come soon, for Death too often takes

  the best ones first and leaves the bad behind:

  she’s much awaited in the blessèd realms;

  this mortal beauty passes, it can’t last.

  He’ll see, if he arrives in time, all virtues,

  every beauty, every regal habit, joined

  together in one body, fully tempered;

  he’ll say my rhymes are mute and that my wit

  is overcome by so much brilliant light.

  But if he comes too late, he’ll weep forever.

  249

  What fear I feel when I recall that day

  I left my lady looking sad and pensive,

  and my heart stayed behind! And yet there’s nothing

  I think about more gladly or more often.

  Again I see her, standing humbly there

  among the lovely ladies, like a rose

  among some lesser blooms, not sad, or happy,

  like one who fears but feels no other ills.

  Her normal ornaments were laid aside,

  the gay clothes and the garlands and the pearls,

  her song and laughter and her sweet, kind speech.

  And so I left my life there, full of doubts;

  and now sad omens, dreams, and darkest thoughts

  attack me here. Pray God they may be false!

  250

  My lady used to visit me in sleep,

  though far away, and her sight would console me,

  but now she frightens and depresses me

  and I’ve no shield against my gloom and fear;

  for now I seem to see in her sweet face

  true pity mixing in with heavy pain,

  and I hear things that tell my heart it must

  divest itself of any joy or hope.

  “Don’t you recall that evening we met last,

  when I ran out of time,” she says, “and left

  you standing there, your eyes filled up with tears?

  “I couldn’t and I didn’t tell you then

  what I must now admit is proved and true:

  you must not hope to see me on this earth.”

  251

  Oh, wretched vision, horrid likelihood!

  Could it be true that now, before her time,

  her good light is extinguished, that has made

  my life content with hope and sorrow both?

  If it were true, though, wouldn’t I have heard it

  through other messengers, such thunderous news,

  not just from her? Let God and Nature not

  permit such loss, and let my thoughts be false!

  I must still hope for sight of her sweet face

  whose loveliness both keeps me still alive

  and gives our world what honor it possesses.

  And if indeed she’s left her lovely dwelling

  to rise to those eternal halls forever,

  I pray my own last day be not far off.

  252

  In doubt about my state I weep, I sing,

  I hope and fear, I try to ease my pain

  with sighs and rhymes. With all his might,

  Love rasps upon my heart, using his file.

  Now, will her lovely, holy face restore

  to my eyes, ever, light that first awoke them

  (alas, I have no sense of my own worth)

  or will they
be condemned to weep forever?

  Will Heaven, claiming what belongs to it,

  not care what happens to those left behind

  who need her eyes for sun, are else in darkness?

  I live in fear, in a perpetual war,

  and am no longer what I was, like one

  who walks a dangerous road, afraid and lost.

  253

  Oh, glances sweet and little words of wisdom,

  will I see you again, and will I hear you?

  Blond hair that Love has used to bind my heart

  and lead it, captured, to its execution!

  Oh, lovely face that shaped my own harsh fate,

  face that I weep for, never to enjoy!

  Oh, secretive deception, loving trick,

  to bring me pleasure that turns into pain!

  Even if sometimes from those gentle eyes,

  where I most live and where my thoughts most dwell,

  there comes to me a touch of honest sweetness,

  quite promptly, Fortune, driving me away

  and breaking up the goodness I might taste,

  sends me to travel, on horses or on ships.

  254

  I listen still, and still I hear no news

  of her, my sweet, beloved enemy,

  and know not what to think or say of it,

  since fear and hope together pierce my heart.

  To be that beautiful has done much harm

  to people in the past; this one’s more lovely

  and also much more chaste: does God perhaps

  think best to make of her a star in Heaven,

  or rather, a full sun? If so, my life,

  my brief repose, and my long line of troubles,

  are coming to an end. Oh, separation,

  why have you kept me far from my harm’s source?

  My little story is already told,

  and my life ended in its middle years.

  255

  To wish for evening and to hate the dawn,

  that’s the proclivity of happy lovers;

  for me the evening compounds woes and weeping.

  I like the morning better, happier hour,

  when sometimes at one moment the two suns

  appear, to show me two resplendent Easts,

  so similar in beauty and in light

  that Heaven itself might fall in love with earth,

  as happened when those boughs were growing green

  that have their deep roots in my heart and tell

  that I must love another more than me.

  If two opposing hours sway me so,

  it’s natural to want the one that calms me

  and hate the one that brings me suffering.

  256

  I’d like to take revenge on her, whose gaze

  and speech destroy me first, and then, as if

  to make my pain the worse, who flees and hides

  depriving me of eyes both sweet and cruel.

  Thus bit by bit she saps and wears away

  my weary spirits, she devours them,

  and like a lion roars above my heart

  at night when I might otherwise get rest.

  My soul, which Death is happy to evict,

  departs from me and uses that release

  to go and visit her, who threatens it.

  I’d be surprised if sometimes when my soul

  speaks to her, weeps, and then embraces her,

  she didn’t have her sleep disturbed, and listen.

  257

  My eyes, intense and heavy with desire,

  were fixed upon that face I sigh and yearn for,

  when Love, as if to say, “What are you thinking?”

  imposed my second love, her hand, between us.

  My heart, still struggling like a just-hooked fish,

  or like a fledgling bird entrapped by lime,

  did not respond to such a lively virtue

  or turn his busied senses toward the truth;

  instead my sight, losing its object, found

  a new means to its end, as in a dream,

  the end without which it finds nothing good.

  My soul, caught up between opposing glories,

  experienced things I still don’t understand:

  celestial joy along with some sweet strangeness.

  258

  Bright sparks came from that pair of lovely lights

  and cast a mild radiance upon me,

  and then came sighing, from a most wise heart,

  such gentle floods of lively eloquence

  that just the memory of it here consumes me

  when I recall that day and start to think

  about the way my spirits swooned, responding

  to this new change from her accustomed harshness.

  My soul, brought up on sorrow, nursed on pain

  (how great the power of established habit!),

  was so much weakened by the double pleasure,

  trembling and caught between its fear and hope,

  that at the taste of unpredicted goodness

  it seemed as though it might abandon me.

  259

  I’ve always sought a solitary life—

  the stream banks, woods, and meadows all know this—

  in order to avoid minds blind and deaf

  that have lost sight of how to get to Heaven;

  and if my wishes had to be fulfilled

  far from the fragrant air I knew in Tuscany,

  the Sorgue would welcome me to its dark hills

  and help me to both weep and sometimes sing.

  But my old fortune, ever my sworn foe,

  brings me back here, where I grow filled with anger

  to see my lovely treasure in the mud;

  just once, though, she was friendly to this hand

  I’m writing with; and not unjustly, either.

  Love saw it, as my lady knows. And I.

  260

  Two lovely eyes, brimming with virtue’s sweetness:

  I saw them under such a lucky star

  that my heart scorns all other nests of love

  next to those two with their amazing charm.

  Whoever is most praised, in any age,

  on any foreign shore, cannot compete:

  not she who brought so much travail to Greece

  and to poor Troy its final throes and shrieks,

  not that fine Roman who ripped up her breast,

  both chaste and angry, with her steel, and not

  Polyxena, Hypsipyle, or Argia.

  If I’m not wrong, this excellence of hers

  is Nature’s glory, a delight to me,

  new to this world and soon to disappear.

  261

  Should any lady look for lasting fame,

  for wisdom, virtue, or for courtesy,

  let her look deeply in my enemy’s eyes,

  she whom the world considers my madonna.

  She can learn there how honor’s won, God’s loved,

  how chastity can be combined with gaiety,

  and which way is the straightest route to Heaven,

  where she is wanted and anticipated;

  and how to speak (no style can equal it),

  and lovely silences and those fine ways

  which human wit cannot set down on paper.

  She can’t learn there the endless comeliness

  that dazzles all of us, for that sweet light

  comes by good fortune, not by any art.

  262

  —“Life is most precious, so it seems to me,

  and next, true virtue in a woman fair.”

  —“You’ve got the order wrong! There never were,

  Mother, things dear or lovely without virtue,

  “and anyone who lets herself lose honor

  is not a woman and is not alive;

  though she may look the same, her life’s a death,

  or worse than that, made bitter by her sorrow.

 
“I never marveled at Lucrece’s choice

  except that she resorted to the knife

  when I’d have thought her anguish would suffice.”

  Philosophers will come and go, and may

  dispute of this forever; they’ll stay below,

  and she will mount toward Heaven in her flight!

  263

  Tree of victorious triumph, crowning both

  poets and emperors, to their honor:

  how many days you’ve made me sad or happy

  in this my very brief and mortal life!

  True Lady, focused solely on your honor,

  which you can reap above all others here,

  the snares and nets and birdlimes set by Love

  cannot deceive you or defeat your wisdom;

  nobility of blood and other things

  prized by us all, like pearls, rubies, gold,

  you rightly scorn as vile worldly burdens;

  and your high beauty, matchless in this world,

  would pain you if it didn’t serve as foil

  to set off your best treasure, chastity.

  264

  I walk in thought, and in my thoughts I am

  assailed by such self-pity that it leads

  to bouts and fits of weeping,

  much different from the ones I used to have:

  for seeing every day my end come near

  I’ve begged that God will furnish me with wings,

  the kind our reason uses

  to move from mortal prisons up to Heaven.

  But up to now I’ve found that nothing helps,

  no sighs or tears or prayers that I’ve expressed;

  and that’s appropriate, I think, because

  a man who’s fallen down along the way

  deserves to lie there on the ground if it’s

  quite clear he has the power to stand and walk.

  Those arms are still wide open,

  stretched out in mercy, ready for my trust,

  but fear locks up my heart;

  I see the woes of others, dread my own,

  and am spurred on but fear it’s much too late.

  One thought keeps speaking in my mind; it says:

  “What are you yearning for? Help from what quarter?

  Can you not see, poor fool,

  how time runs by and lengthens your dishonor?

  Make a decision now, and make it firmly,

  to root up from your heart the love of pleasure

  that never makes you happy

  and never even gives you time to breathe.

  “If you’re already wearied and disgusted

  by the ephemeral sweetness which the world

  holds out to you, so treacherously each time,

  why would you go on hoping to attain it

  since it lacks any peace or true endurance?

  While your own body lives

  you have the means of reining in your thoughts.

  So grasp it while you can;

  delay is dangerous, as you well know,